woman in. well i'm tom arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture last week the republican controlled house of representatives passed the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act better known as cispa so assist but what's needed to make the end that safer or is it the patriot act of the internet destroying our privacy with that just a moment also last week scores of protesters were arrested outside congressman paul ryan's office the protesting his medicaid killing budget one of those arrested was actor no a while ago join us to talk more about last week's events and later thanks to our

broken airport security system sikhs in america are subject to racial profiling and unnecessary screenings because of their dress and skin color now they found a way to fight back against the profiling by the out now leader in the show. you need to know this last week the republican controlled house of representatives passed the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act better known as system point of system is theoretically to promote cybersecurity by giving corporations and the government the power to share the personal information of online users amongst each other long as those users might be engaging in cyber threats or sister book corporations are even immune from privacy breach lawsuits and the government doesn't need a warrant to collect your information. but here's the biggest problem is the

definition of what a cyber threat might be is really really broad meaning corporations have a pretty large umbrella under which they can share your personal information with each other and with the government it could lead to not just hackers or cyber terrorists being targeted but also file sharers bloggers and you if you were to write a really really angry e-mail some free internet advocates are saying that cisco's not only worse than sopa it's also the patriot act of the internet here's internet activist aaron swartz speaking r.c. last weekend's a sprint. so what it is is that sort of a patriot act for the internet that allows the government to go to providers like facebook and google and so on and ask them for data without a warrant without any of the normal privacy protections of the law and also with these provide to start sharing information with each other so basically eviscerates all the existing privacy protections we have that well and now major corporate supporters of the legislation are starting have second thoughts software giant

microsoft says they're rethinking their support for says but calling on lawmakers to pass additional safeguards to protect the online privacy of americans president obama raised the same concerns when he issued a veto threat last week to the house passed cispa version of the bill so where does the fight over cispa stand today and what do we the people need to know to preserve a free and open internet matt would joins me now is the policy director of free press dot net net welcome. great great to have you with us i briefly summarize it was that a reasonable summary you want to add to it for no i mean that's good i mean you know there are several problems with this bill we see lots and lots of civil liberties concerns there's really no limit on what the government can do with its information so you mention the broad definitions our concern is not only that but once that information gets into the government it could flow to the n.s.a. we could have defense and intelligence agencies sifting through americans private data and there's really no immunity no ability for companies to be held responsible

for that as long as they make a good faith effort in the terms of the law to share information related to cyber threats so lots of very overbroad definitions and really no control on what happens to that information once they get inside the machine well in one of the more. problematic variations of information getting into the government and then there not being any controls and where it goes right is the there was a whole series of stories last year that came out of southern sure of it down in georgia and in mississippi who were literally checking their girlfriends past you know looking into. there was one guy was looking into a jolt of water or you know always going to i mean it's like it's just once it gets in the law enforcement it can go anywhere it's not on so how do you. first of all you said overly broad right the ability to look at this the fourth amendment is pretty clear that we're supposed to be secure in our papers are persons papers and effects. in law somebody swears an oath that we that there's

a reason you know probable cause that we can go to congress and we can do. is there no fourth amendment protection of any sort this bill i might not go that far there's an old statutory construction canon that says you don't construe a statute to violate the constitution unless you have to so you might have some protection on the fourth amendment as maybe the outside limit if we're lucky the problem here is that this bill is supposed to be about cyber security and we have these very broad definitions of what constitutes a cyber threat and what can be shared by companies and by government back and forth but even if we don't stop there the problem is that this bill is no longer limited just to cyber security so it talks about prosecuting cyber security crime to talk about protecting life of individuals if there's any sort of threat to that it talks about protecting children it's a lot like people said the patriot act or maybe even going back to the earlier versions of the internet bills that said you know we have to keep people safe on this internet congress not really understanding what that means or what to do about it and just kind of throwing everything into the hopper and seeing what sticks where did this come from. question a lot of people there's been

a stark division in the congress between people supporting laws that start with the n.s.a. and start with a defense mechanism versus those who would rather see this kind of activity going on at the h.s. and maybe neither of those is a good idea we're not too sure about whether v.h.s. is a better place for this information to live but there does seem to be a lot of pressure from the defense community and then you also talked about the companies backing off one of the reasons they have like and like the mccain version of the bill in the senate is that there is no burden on them so if you're really a cybersecurity hawk if there is such a thing you might want to have as the white house has said more guarantee of protection for critical infrastructure this bill basically leaves it all up to the government of the companies to voluntarily share information in and out of that we're supposed to get security really without many checks and balances which is our main concern but also with no real guarantee that the information will be used for that it be the intended purposes and these companies are web based companies by and large and as in most of these web based companies actually make most of their living sharing our information during other words you know google's figures out who

your what web sites you're visiting so advertise for the new york times can direct an ad to write to you. can they then be using the information that they got about us as a consequence of the government tripping that switch by saying they look into so and so we're going to met would what he's up to they might do that after these kinds of shows right there is so my point there is some danger of that i mean the bill was narrowed somewhat by amendments that were proposed a couple weeks ago and then passed last week and i would say the definitions have gotten narrower over time whether they're narrow enough to actually preserve people's privacy and civil liberties i'm still very unsure about that and also there's this again false sense of dividing between security and liberty famous ben franklin quote on that very topic right we shouldn't be sacrificing our privacy in our liberty in order to gain security because we'll probably wind up with neither and that's really what we're afraid of here we will see the fruit of information act allows us to know what's going on inside our government i understand this bill specifically exempts. government agencies read from. for requests we will

not you know if we suspect that we're being tracked cyber tracked with or even if we want to look back and see what happened ten years ago we have no ability to do it strips us of that privilege right there's that and there's also the immunity for private companies as long as they're acting in good faith and are trying to apply was a dictator exactly a very squishy term the lawyers love and you have no resort to floyd to find out what's going on and you top that off with the fact that there is maybe once a year the bill has changed somewhat over time but a report on the privacy implications and funnily enough on the non cybersecurity use of information you might ask at the outset why have any uses for non cybersecurity purposes at this is supposed to be protecting us online and protecting our communications networks sure but this one to your report is sorely lacking in our opinion we have just a little less than a minute left is there even a need for anything like this is there a legitimate concern you know i mean i'm not a cyber security expert i have to say that we have been concerned very much about

this bill because of the civil liberties and the privacy implications for internet users so we very much concerned about keeping the internet open and free and not discouraging people from using it i think there might be a need i think that's a subject of legitimate debate at least let's put it that way but i don't think that this overly broad bill that just basically cast as wide a net as possible and whatever we catch in that net is fair game for the government to use i think that's the wrong approach to solving any sort of legitimate threat that we can talk about you know makes perfect sense now thank you so much for being with us thanks not going to see you again good to see you again to that would this report coming from conservatives for cisco highlights a glaring double standard when it comes to internet legislation here's the bigger picture on this you might remember back a year or so ago there was this big debate about net neutrality. there's a legitimate fear that i as pieces would begin discriminating against certain web content having for example content providers pay for faster access for example comcast could start telling websites you have to pay you know if you want to stream more video you want to have more information to pay us to feed your larger feed new

york times hop imposed drudge they can probably afford it easier than a small blog for example like your blog or my blog you know it could be throttled down basically banished from the web so to prevent this from happening advocates for an open internet propose net neutrality that atrocity basically meaning all i s p's have to treat all and service providers all have to or hosts rather have to treat all internet traffic equally they can't sort of toll booths they can't carve up the internet to only stream websites that they own or that they have business relationships with. backed up net neutrality they approve new rules to prevent eye as piece from blocking access to competitors websites but the f.c.c. didn't outlaw i as a piece from charging you and me more for faster access still even with that proviso in there so they can always make money conservatives went nuts over even that limited scope of net neutrality proposed by the f.c.c. and republicans in congress voted to pass legislation to overturn not to draw any

basic talking point on the right about it is that the internet has worked just fine without government interference let me add the internet was created by the car for me it was originally darpa but only in appears to work just fine without government interference so why start interfering now take a listen. the internet works just fine the way it is it is one of the least regulated spheres on the planet it's by the way the only portion of the economy that's adding jobs where everybody else is shedding jobs or bouncing along the bottom and your right solution is let's treat it like we treat other industries and regulate the crap out of it and ruin it but now conservatives are lining up in support of drastic government involvement in the internet. why because now the giant corporations see something that they can makes more money off of let's get more information which we can sell they didn't like that and they do like this this shouldn't be too much of a surprise wherever the corporations go to conservatives go even in cyberspace but

the big picture is that the internet is more than just a way for big companies to make money it's a vital part of our information commons what helps provide an educated and informed populace you know the thing that thomas jefferson said was necessary to have a functioning democracy we have to keep the internet both free and open and that means both defending it from corporate interests that want to carve it up and from prying eyes in the government who want to read your emails without a warrant yes the net neutrality no to sista. coming up last week around one hundred people were arrested outside congressman paul ryan's capitol hill office for protesting the huge cuts to medicaid and his trickle down austerity budget one of those arrested was actor noah wyle it will join us after the break to discuss more on his arrest and on his opposition to the ryan budget.

we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until she told the truth. i have a confession i am a total get of friends that i love crab and hip hop music and for. that he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you it's a place. for the first. you

know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

in screwed news apparently figured out as john boehner things people who aren't worth hundreds of millions of dollars like mitt romney are losers turning on c.n.n. on sunday boehner defended romney's enormous wealth and argued that it will actually appeal to voters take a what. do you think that someone who is as wealthy as he is who had as much privilege as he is has a hill to climb to overcome so american people don't want to vote for a loser but they don't want to vote for someone who hasn't been successful. maybe we should ask bigger boehner what his definition of a loser is are school teachers who haven't made millions laying off factory workers losers what about community organizers who devoted their days to registering voters

rather than mergers and acquisitions are they losers too if so that might explain a lot about what republicans have been trying to do in the house of representatives over this past year giving trillions literally trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the so-called winners and ripping the social safety net out from under the rest of us it's in response to this attack on working americans around one hundred people were arrested last week for demonstrate outside congressman paul ryan's capitol hill office paul ryan of course is the multimillionaire congressman who authored the republican budget which passed out of the house of representatives this year with a near unanimous support by republicans that demonstration was organized by the group disability for attend the programs today which is trying to raise awareness about the devastating impacts of the ryans trickle down republican budget on state medicaid programs ryan budget radically slashed medicaid funding over the next ten years cutting federal health care money to treat the working poor and disabled

people by over a third the urban institute estimated that the republican cuts would lead to twenty seven million poor disabled and elderly americans losing their medicaid health insurance coverage over the next decade this made x. republicans want to take to the nation's social safety net only does one thing free up funds for a three trillion dollars tax cut for the koch brothers mitt romney and the rest of our nation's governors and among those arrested last week protesting against this budget was actor and activist no wiley now starring in the t.n.t. series falling skies no joins me now from los angeles to talk more about this issue now a welcome thanks tom good to be here thanks for joining us how did you end up outside paul ryan's office last week and why. it was sort of a. combination of factors i have a friend who has been a friend for about sixteen years who is one of the original members of this group adept and i had dinner with him in chicago last year and he asked me to be part of

this action in d.c. and i promised him i would so i was keeping the word to a friend and as i started to keep myself on the subject matter it seemed a lot less about aligning myself with a fringe group for an esoteric issue and a lot more to sort of maybe use it as a catalyst to open up this broader conversation for what the social safety net in this country should be ought to be was promised to be and has been up held as you know about about three hours ago i was walking down mass avenue here in d.c. with the guy who first introduced you and me several years ago richard greene and he told me the story of how you had to head home one evening from some gig that you were both that so that you could finish reading a piece of legislation actually read the bill how can we get more americans that passionate that concerned about the laws that congress is passing. i don't know i don't know i you know like i said this started with something that was

a personal connection to a friend and then piqued my interest from there i think if you're staying informed you're going to stumble across something that affects that's the other interesting thing about this is that this group of people that i was arrested with who most of whom are in wheelchairs and suffer from some form of disability are really fighting the fight for all of us because we all are one car accident one skiing accident one work related injury or just age away from needing some sort of home health care. as a preference to being institutionalized so they're fighting for an issue that really really going to affect everybody in however this shakes out is going to have huge ramifications across the board yeah you're absolutely right season two of your hit show falling skies is premiering in june on t.n.t. i'm guessing you're going to have a busy summer but do you have other plans right now to take part in activism. i hope so you know this is an issue that's it's going to be a long fight you know the group i was with was instrumental in changing

a lot of the transportation issues around disability and they were uniformly successful in a relatively short period of time they're very sober about knowing that this is going to be a much larger fight because they're fighting a very entrenched interests currently the federal government through their medicaid spending has a bias towards institutions and the community based care which is what these people are advocating for so they could live at home with their families hold jobs have the freedom to interact as they see fit is currently just an option that receives you know twenty percent of the federal funding and yet costs fractions of what it cost institutionalise somebody so it's an issue that's going to take a lot longer to get sort of on the table and discuss them i'm interested in staying with you you're a very successful actor you're doing well professionally and i'm sure financially and as are many of your peers what do you think. i'm still a loser though to get why i wonder what what do you think makes what and how do we

get more people who are successful who do you know it to to empathize with people who are not who are not wealthy or as you as you were pointing i mean we're all one one accident away from the wheelchair. how do we wake people up to that i did and it's circles back to what you were saying in the intro which is to call attention to the economic disparity in this country and how guys like the koch brothers and men of their ilk. i've really managed to divorce themselves from not just the working class of the united states where our success or failure as a nation affects their wealth but completely from the united states i mean they're in another bubble their their wealth is protected on on a multi national level and has nothing to do is really the rest of us i think that's the issue that will hopefully wake people up going into the election year although nobody seems to be wanting to run out of poverty platform. it was

explained to me by this really wonderful guy bob kafka is a longstanding activist for adapt that when they give money to transportation it's called job creation when they give it to medicare it's called welfare and stigmatized even though medicaid spending creates not only thousands of jobs but great jobs you know jobs that are in the community jobs that are providing solace and service to your fellow man positive jobs so you just got to keep you know the bandwagon and yes absolutely you know while you're doing great work thank you so much. it's always a pleasure always a pleasure thank you as conservatives push more austerity the united states the backlash against austerity in europe continues on sunday tens of thousands of spaniards took to the streets in over fifty cities across spain to protest against their government's trickledown austerity measures spain has been especially hard hit by a sturdy than unemployment rate now at twenty four point four percent the highest in the eurozone plus more than half of all spaniards under twenty five

a currently unemployed and the economy is officially now in another recession spanish labor organizations are calling for a second day of mass demonstrations around spain for tuesday which happens to be international workers day also known as may day and here's something you need to know about mayday mayday it's been with us for a long long time pagans celebrated may day as a festival for the first spring planting in a bid to make sure it would be a good harvest a queen would be picked in the village to oversee the fertility the crops on may day and young people would dance around the maypole a tradition that was supposed to help help them find a new love the many of those pagan traditions eventually disappeared after they were outlawed by the church then there in the robber baron era in the united states may day took on a whole different meaning in response to terrible working conditions labor unions and far left groups began organizing to demand better pay and heaven forbid an eight hour work day by april of eighteen eighty six tens of thousands of workers

had organized. and we're calling for a general strike the epicenter of the action in the united states was in chicago by may first may day eighty thousand workers were on strike bringing chicago factories to a grinding halt that's when police fired back on may third chicago police fired into a crowd of striking workers at the mccormick reaper works factory killing four the next day workers held a demonstration in haymarket square scores of cops raided the peaceful gathering rounding up and beating the demonstrators in the chaos and an unidentified person threw a bomb into the crowd which killed a police officer the violence of that day was a huge setback frankly for the labor movement in the united states but it inspired a labor movement all around the world a few years later an eight hundred eighty nine an organization of labor groups in paris known as the second international declared may first the international

working class holiday to commemorate the martyrs' at haymarket square other than here there are other european labor and socialist organizations followed suit over the next century may day would host strikes and demonstrations around the world for workers' rights to this day eighty nations still consider may day or international workers day a national holiday except for the united states stead we have labor day in september and have called mayday a lot of different names from americanization day to loyalty day to law day basically trying to avoid what may day was really all about under any circumstances the occupy movement is trying to put made a back on the map tomorrow and over one hundred cities in the united states the occupy movement will be holding rallies marches and teach ins occupy is calling for a general strike for our nation to see what a day without the ninety nine percent would be like so find a rally near you and if you can find

a maypole to and celebrate may day in america this year. crazy alert the word is here is battle for. hoffman a dutch artist has created a masterpiece sure to grab the attention of that loving babies everywhere often has constructed eighty five foot tall giant inflatable rubber duckie which is displaying on waterways around the world over the next five years so far the bath time favorite has visited auckland new zealand osaka japan and the laura valley in france hoffman is no stranger to massive animal art previous creations of his including a giant yellow bunny it took over the streets of o'brien or rebrov sweden last summer talking about his motivation to create the giant dark hoffman said there

were dark knows no front ears it doesn't discriminate people and it doesn't have a political connotation the friendly floating rubber duck has healing properties it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define keep your eyes open for those giant rubber duckie coming to a river near you. after the break are you fed up with being profiled a hornet was scanned at the airport or one of americans sure is and they've come up with a high tech way to fight back against unwarranted airport profiles. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old so she told the truth. i'm

a contestant i am a total get a friend that i love traveling hip hop music and. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you it's place. look look look. look . you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.